Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Chicken-free Nuggets

Three vegan chicken nuggets next to some p.t. fries (p.t. stands for potatoes and turnips). A tiny container of ketchup is nestled next to a mandarin orange cut into wedges. In the two smaller containers are sugar snap peas and jicama cut into fall leaf shapes, and a date walnut carob brownie for dessert.Verdict: We just found these "Health Is Wealth" brand vegan chicken nuggets at the health food store. He likes them, and I was happy that they were all-natural and contained no evil trans fats. He ate a huge plate of the p.t. fries with his breakfast, so there were hardly any left for his lunch. The uneaten remainders today were some of the sugar snaps (he likes to open them and eat the peas out of them -- me, too!) and the mandarin orange, which he ran out of time for. He ate it after school alongside half a pomegranate (it's pomegranate season, hooray!). 4 stars.

I love vegan chicken nuggets! i've had "Health is wealth" chicken free patties which are really good warmed up with some honey mustard sauce or ketchup to dip it in..i bought soy chicken nuggets from trader joes which were really good too..and i just was curious about the carob brownie..i dont know much about carob but i've always been interested in trying it if u cud give any pointers on that..thanx..looks like another great lunch today!

Hi, erin! Gee, I don't know. We've never tried this brand before so I didn't know to watch for that. I baked them for about 8 minutes in the oven, then packed them with a loose foil covering in the lunchbox. I just double-checked with the shmoo, and he tells me they weren't tough at school.

Hi, dayna. Re. carob, if you've never tried it it may take a little getting used to. It has a sweet taste but doesn't taste exactly like chocolate. You can substitute carob powder for cocoa powder in recipes, or make it into hot carob cocoa, or throw a spoonful into smoothies. Roasted carob powder has a better flavor than plain carob powder, but either one will do. I really enjoy the taste of it, especially with banana. If you're vegan, watch out for whey or milk in storebought carob chips and candies.

We were so mad when Health is Wealth changed their recipe so that the chicken free patties now contain eggs. They changed the recipe back for their nuggets, and I heard a rumor that they were going to change their patties back to vegan. We haven't even looked at them since Boca changed their recipe to make their chicken free patties vegan. Yum.

Having both worked with jicama my boyfriend and I are astounded that you were able to get such perfect looking leaf shapes from them. It appears to me that a cookie cutter was used on thin slices. But SO insists that a cookie cutter won't work. (and I'm willing to agree, but that’s what it LOOKS like) so how did you do it?!

Hi, alien sunset! I cut thin slices of jicama and then cut out the shapes with cookie cutters. You win! Metal cookie cutters seem to work the best -- they're thinner and sharper. But we also had good results with a small plastic cookie cutter (Little shmoo cut out hearts for me :-).

Did you know they have a school program where if you order it through your school, the school gets 30%?!?!?! That's what I did, which makes me feel very good, on top of being excited to get my new lunchbox.

Now the trick will be for me and the boy in my classroom who has one to not get them mixed up. How handy that they have name tags!

keep your eyes peeled because health is wealth makes real chicken nuggets too in a box that's almost identical to the vegan box, and they're usually kept together because the chicken is free range/organic so they're both in the crunchy dirty hippie part of the freezer section !